


bend your chest open

by twilightstargazer



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Ambiguously Happy Ending, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort, F/M, post 3x15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 11:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6852046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightstargazer/pseuds/twilightstargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Start with Bellamy Blake.</p><p>Clarke wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like, choking on her own lungs, gasping for air. </p><p>or, Bellamy is used to try and make Clarke crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bend your chest open

**Author's Note:**

> Anon on tumblr asked for this and I delivered because I like pain ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> (unbetaed)

For a moment it’s like time seems to have frozen. She can hear nothing but her own blood roaring in her ears, along with the deafening sound of her heartbeat. Her whole body seems to cease up at the words, and she feels nothing but panic rushing into her, not even the stinging pain of the stab wounds.

_Start with Bellamy Blake._

Clarke wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like, choking on her own lungs, gasping for air. Her blood turns to ice and her chest feels like it’s caving in, a dozen tiny shards cutting her open from the inside out.

“No,” she croaks, the words almost a whisper on her lips, “No, mom. Mom, please don’t do this.” She struggles against the bindings, wanting nothing more than to reach out and shake her mother.

Abby barely spares a glance at her, instead nodding at Jaha before turning to face the doors to the throne room with her hands clasped behind her back, looking calm as anything. It isn’t long before she hears the faint shuffling of feet outside along the corridor, and her heart jumps in to her throat.

The doors creak open as they enter, Bellamy held tight between the steel grip of the two guards, but he walks forward with deliberate slowness, chin up, straight backed and proud even in the face of death. At any other time she would bite back a smile, because that was so _Bellamy_ ; hard headed and tenacious, but now it makes her stomach drop and eyes burn. She thinks back to what Raven told her that night, when she was still possessed by ALIE. _Poison to everyone around you_. Maybe it's true, maybe she’s the monster who can’t do anything but hurt people.

He starts when he sees her, bound to the post in the middle of the room and bleeding from her chest. She can see the way his lips part, her name about to drop from them, right before the guards shove him down so he’s kneeling before her. One of them yanks his head back by his hair, and he hisses through clenched teeth.

“Bellamy,” she murmurs, and her voice breaks. Another tear rolls down her cheek and she sees the helpless look in his eyes as he follows its path. “Bellamy, I’m so sorry, I-”

Her mother steps back into her line of vision just as Ontari steps behind him. “What’s the passphrase, Clarke?”

She only lets her eyes flick up to her for half a second before looking back down at him, and she finds him already looking back, jaw locked in place and face blank. She doesn’t notice Abby’s nod towards the guard, and barely represses a shout when he kicks him in the stomach.

The air whooshes out of him, and Bellamy doubles over, face screwed up in pain but not even a whimper leaving his lips. He glances back up at her, and there’s nothing but steely resolution in his eyes.

He gets kicked twice more, once more to the stomach and the other to his chest. The guard readies for a fourth, and Clarke can't bear to watch, turning her head as much as she could and screwing her eyes shut. She flinches when she hears the hollow smack of a kick to the ribs, and the pressure behinds her eyes worsen, threatening to spill over.

Out of nowhere a hand roughly grabs her by the chin, forcing her to look forward. Her eyes fly open and a cry is wrenched from her throat without consent as Jaha squeezes her jaw.

“Eyes on him,” he hisses, squeezing even harder until she cries out again.

“Hey!” she hears Bellamy grunts, struggling against his captives for the first time since he was brought in, “Don’t touch her!”

He’s quickly silenced by a clip to the jaw, the force of it causing his head to snap back, and his lip to split, and before he’s even turned back to the front, the other guard delivers a solid uppercut to the next side.

“Mom,” Clarke pleads, staring helplessly as blood dribbles down Bellamy’s chin, dripping onto his jacket. “Mom please. I know you’re still in there. You don’t- you don’t want to hurt him, you want to hurt me.”

Abby cups her cheek, thumb brushing away one of her tears and tries for a gentle smile. “But this is hurting you Clarke, can’t you see?” She turns away and looks at the two guards holding Bellamy still. “Tie him up then return to your posts,” she tells them, looking at Clarke the entire time, “We’ll take it from here.”

She looks on helplessly, desperation causing her insides to crawl, as they drag him between two posts still in her line of vision. He tries to fight them at first, kicking out at one of them, but quickly stops when he receives another blow to the head for his efforts.

“You can stop this,” Jaha says, arms crossed as he surveys the scene with the type of flippancy one would peruse the morning’s paper. They string him up in almost the same way the two of them did Lincoln all those months ago back at the Dropship, pulling off his jacket and leaving him in just his thin undershirt. She barely registers the doors closing shut, not when Ontari stands next to him, slowly unsheathing a wicked looking blade from her side. It’s probably as her forearm, glinting dangerously and curved at the tip. “All you have to do,” he continues, tucking back the hair that’s fallen in her face, “Is tell us the passphrase.”

The other girl skims it across the soft skin of his inner bicep, letting the blood begin to bead in its wake, and Clarke realises that she’s shaking, cold sweat leaking down her back while her fingers go numb.

“Don’t do it, Clarke,” says Bellamy, chest heaving and muscles tense. Even from here she can see just how much effort he’s putting in to hiding his pain. “Whatever happens, don’t give them the password.”

“Bellamy-” she starts, but never gets to finish as Ontari traces his collarbone with the knife, pressing down harder than she did before and letting the blood run freely.

His jaw clenches shut, but never once does his eyes stray from Clarke, looking at her as though she was the sun and he has been trapped below the earth for his entire life. The tension he holds throws the tendons in his neck in to sharp relief, but he remains quiet after each cut she makes.

Meanwhile Clarke is fighting against her restraints, wrists rubbed raw and face shining with tears. She begs all three of them; a litany of ‘no’s and ‘please’s falling off her tongue, but she’s ignored in favour slicing open a new bit of exposed skin.

And she brings down the knife, stabbing him between a pair of ribs, not deep enough to puncture anything, but hard enough that Bellamy jerks against the ropes, a strangled yell bouncing off the walls of the room.

Clarke begins to cry in earnest now, the metallic taste of blood sits heavy on her tongue from biting her lip and her vision blurs. “Please stop,” she whispers, broken, just like how she feels inside, “Please don’t do this.”

“Then give us the passphrase,” her mother counters as Ontari repeats the motion again, on the other side of him. There are bloodstains quickly blooming across his t shirt, more red than beige now, and she can see his hold on the ropes loosening as he starts to slump forward.

She can’t do anything but sniffle, eyes stuck on Bellamy’s form as she knifes him across the face. “Please,” she rasps, and she can feel blood sliding down her own wrists from where the rope cut in to her skin.

The knife is placed against his forearm and slowly pulled down until his blood begins to drip on the floor. Bellamy makes a sound in the back of his throat, like he’s choking, and Clarke flinches, as though she’s been hit.

All of a sudden they freeze, heads cocked to the side and the only sounds to be heard are Bellamy’s harsh breathing and Clarke’s whimpers. Jaha is the one to break the silence first, turning to Ontari. She nods, and drops the hand poised to inflict another cut on his arm and Clarke feels relief surge through her.

It’s quickly squelched however when her mother moves to stand behind him, and grabs his head lolling against his chest, pulling it back and holding the scalpel to his throat. In the same beat, Ontari hands Jaha a metal pipe and kneels before him, head bowed.

“What are you doing?” she breathes, unsure of whom exactly she is talking to, eyes flickering between each pair.

“We can’t let you do this Clarke,” Abby replies easily, pressing the blade into his skin, cutting in to it, “Either you give me the passphrase now, or you watch them both die.”

Her mouth hangs open in horror and she redoubles her efforts against her bonds, surging forward in a way that wrenches her shoulder out of its socket, but she ignores the pain. “Mom, no. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this,” she sobs, voice hitching when she sees blood begin to run down Bellamy’s neck. He makes a gasping sound, and his eyes flit over to Clarke, but she can’t watch him, can’t meet his gaze while he dies in front of her.

Jaha readies the pipe and Clarke screams, “No!” when he brings it down against Ontari’s head with a sickening crunch. The other girl drops to the floor, black blood spilling from her head. Meanwhile her mother presses the scalpel further into his throat and if she continues like that, he’ll be choking on his own blood in a matter of seconds.

And then the doors burst open.

Miller is the first one through, shooting her mother in the arm with a tranq gun before Clarke has any time to react. Murphy, Octavia, Bryan and then Pike of all people are right behind him, weapons hot, ready to take out any of the chipped who may appear.

Pike shoots Jaha in the arm, before knocking him out with the butt of his gun, and Octavia and Murphy are already working on untying Bellamy. Bryan undoes Clarke’s own bindings and she pushes past him, mumbling thank you under her breath as she goes.

She drops to her knees beside Bellamy, cradling his head in her lap.

“I need bandages,” she tells them, voice thick, brushing away his fringe from his forehead, “Octavia, try and stop Ontari’s bleeding. We need her alive. There’s supposed to be a med kit in the bag.”

Vaguely, she hears Pike issuing orders in the background- barricade the door, start looking for any other entrances- and Octavia cursing as she only finds a weakening pulse, but Clarke only has eyes for the man in front of her as she wipes away the blood from his face with shaky hands.

“Bellamy,” she breathes, bottom lip quivering as tears threaten to spill once more, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”

He shifts slightly, trying to sit up and batting her hands away when she pushes him back down. It takes him a moment to sit up, and when he does his face is pallid and he’s leaning heavily on her.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, voice gruff, and his hand comes up to wipe away the tears that slide down her cheek. That cause a strangled sob to escape her, and Bellamy ends up pulling her to him, hissing slightly when it jostles his wounds.

Clarke buries her head in her crook of his neck, shakily breathing him in. He smells like copper and gunpowder and sweat, and somehow it helps to comfort her. She feels his fingers tangle in her hair, and she presses further into his neck, letting her fingers trace the cut made by her mother’s blade and allowing her lips to ghost across his pulse point. It jumps under her mouth, his heart beating strong in his chest and she takes a minute to savour it.

“We’re going to be okay,” she whispers against his shoulder, slowly pulling back and setting about cleaning his wounds. “We’re going to be okay,” she says again and sees how his lips curls up into a tired smile.

It’s an outright lie, and they both know it- they’re trapped at the top of a tower, surrounded by the chipped with no feasible escape plan- yet somehow with Bellamy at her side, bruised and bloodied but still alive, it feels true.

He presses a feather light kiss to the crown of her head as she stitches up the stab wounds in his chest.  “Yeah, Clarke,” he sighs, slouching back to make it easier for her to work, “We’re going to be okay.”

It feels like hope, joyful and radiant and maybe even a little bit true all at the same time.

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry with me on [tumblr](http://hiddenpolkadots.tumblr.com/)


End file.
